Video surveillance systems are used in almost all business sectors for security and surveillance purposes. Primary usage of these systems includes live monitoring, reviewing playback videos, and event, alarm, bookmark and incident reviews. A recurring problem with these systems is that they are primarily list driven. Alarm and event lists are presented in a more or less static configuration and need further improvements.
Alarm lists make for difficult reading in that they often show a basic description about alarm details, alarm device, alarm time, and alarm location. Most of the time, alarms will be listed in a tabular list format.
Further, most of the time, alarms will be linked with some video data, like “Motion detection on Camera 39”. For such an alarm, a user has to obtain video from camera 39. Many known types of systems, such as life safety systems, building automation and management systems, home automation systems, and residential security systems, for example, are integrated with a regional video system to provide visual alarm verification.
Existing alarm and event views give more or less static information. There may be linkages to other interfaces for retrieving relevant video, but information needs to be extracted from different interfaces or different subsystems. This problem is more applicable for video based mobile applications (CCTV) since screen size is limited. Nowadays, most residential security systems, connected home systems, and residential home automation systems are controlled and monitored remotely though mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
In summary, in known systems, there is no contextual view or information for events to be reviewed (even before starting video retrieval). For example in a scenario where a CCTV operator is looking for a person in a red shirt who forcibly opened an access door, to find an exact alarm and video clip, the CCTV operator needs to play an entire video clip.